Let It Snow… Faster!

In the spirit of the holiday season, we offer a new HTML5 experience that makes the most of your PC hardware and the new touch capabilities in Windows 8.

Check out Let It Snow and get ready for a GPU-powered snow storm. This experience brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, SVG, CSS, and more. On Windows Developer Preview with support for multi-touch in IE10, you can reach out and brush the snow off the sign and reveal a holiday message -or just use your mouse. If you think your browser can keep up, kick it up to 1000 snowflakes. If it’s more of a flurry than a blizzard, try it with IE9 (or IE10) using the hardware acceleration built into the browser.

Thank you!

Your participation and feedback is an important part of how we build IE. Today we want to say thank you to everyone who browses the Web with IE9, downloads the IE10 previews, runs the test drives, and reports issues on Connect. We also want to thank the people and groups who make the standards process work, the broad community of Web developers, and enthusiastic consumers who work to move the Web forward.

From the entire IE team, we wish you a Happy Hardware-accelerated Holiday Season, and we look forward to another exciting year on the Web in 2012.

Cute, but the significance of the Google Easter Egg was not that it was technically superior but that it was released on their core product for all customers and went (was pushed) viral. You guys do cool stuff but only developers see it. Your marketing people are collecting salaries for nothing.

Hardware accelerated canvas is great and all but web game developers will go where the performance is and for 2D graphics that's with WebGL. Firefox and Chrome (and Opera 12 when it's released) frankly stomp all over IE9 and presumably IE10 as well. Have a read:

OK, all format politics aside, I love these little snow demos. They're also helpful when I want to set the client area to an exact size (usually 1024*768 for me), since maximizing would make my window so big that websites look weird. 🙂

This runs fine on Chrome Canary 18 (1000+ snowflakes at 60FPS) without even hesitating. For current versions of the Browsers IE is winning in the speed for things like this, but Chrome and Firefox are catching up fast.

Also enjoy the Holiday test drive even though it reminds me of what Google did with "let it snow" (Google it, see what happens).

The IE team did a good job with IE9, but I hope they can start pushing out releases faster to keep up with the other browsers.

As a developer it is important to know in which areas the performace varies the most amongst different user agents. Basically, such demos highlight what we have to avoid, such that our products do not confuse our users (and our support team). We cannot tell them 'best viewed in browser X' as no browser is available for all devices, and more important, we are not in a situation where we have to like or dislike our customers based on the choice of their browser. There are even scenarios where the customer cannot choose at all, and increasingly even that the user does not want, or is not able, to modify his running system.

And certainly such tech demos are a great way of letting competitors know where they can pump some extra size out of their apparat.

Once these performance gaps have vanished, it will be great to work with Canvas2D, but for now, it appears as if a use in production would result in 'same markup for less than half of the web' (or poor performance for all).

Keep it up, and tutti l'Albero di Natale!

[reposted, as the msdn blog system failed or succeded silently. I wonder if this is something I will ever get used to]

Wow @ieblog – seriously UNIMPRESSED with that comment above. I actually had faith that Microsoft would pull through and take Web Standards seriously.

Thanks for showing your true stripes.

Guess its time for developers to start actively protesting by blocking Internet Explorer from accessing sites. I'd start by blocking Windows Phone 7 devices but blocking less than 1/3 of 1% of our mobile access seems like it won't be very effective. Guess we'll have to start with blocking IE10 and IE9.

@Anon: "'open', as you probably define it, is irrelevant. What matters is quality, performance, and being free for end users. IE9 support a high quality, high performance codec that is free for end users (me, you, everybody)."

H.264 isn't free. You pay for the encoder, you pay for the decoder, and if you charge for the video you absurdly pay for the privilege of streaming it across the Internet.

Anon: "Lets define 'open' as a browser that is open to any compatible plugin and codec. By this definition, IE9 is the poster child. IE9 is open for other codecs, plugins, and various bloatware."

IE9 supports and only supports H.264 and WebM for HTML5 video. It is not 'open for other codecs'.

Anon: "Browsers that refused to support the de-facto best quality video codec, also tend not to support MP3 audio."

H.264 and MP3 are not open, royalty-free formats and so are not supported by browser vendors who are interested in a open, royalty-free Web stack (i.e. a stack that's compatible with Web standards) such as Firefox and Opera. I can't tell if you genuinely don't understand the issues or if you're sarcastically trumpeting Internet Explorer in order to make the case for Mozilla and friends.

If you stuck with OGG like other browsers support, you don't need to pay this ransom fee.

On a similar note, don't get fooled into using h.264 for HTML5 Video – not only will it only work in IE but you are walking blind into a world of DRM encumbered formats, and totally missing the point of the Open Web.

Open Standards – once again, the only way the Open Web works.

@Microsoft – when are you going to join the Open Web so that your statements about "Same Markup" for cross browser consistency actually ring true? Currently IE is the only browser not supporting Open Standard formats for HTML5 Audio and HTML5 Video.

How can they support something which has no standard, because W3C dropped the ball? VIDEO and AUDIO tags are left to browser vendors with no directive what to support. They didn't learn from nineties still…

(Don't forget patent situation – currently no format beside h264 is cleared of patents – submarines like to lurk)

@Klimax – the WHATWG originally required Ogg in the spec, but pressure from some companies made them remove it: en.wikipedia.org/…/Use_of_Ogg_formats_in_HTML5 – I don't think W3C dropped the ball, they knew it was best, it's other companies who forced the current situation (wikipedia seems to blame Apple and Nokia).

@Microsoft, @Carlos, @Klimax, @Jimmy – As soon as IE9 was in development and the betas came out we (myself, and likely yourselves) as well as many other developers worldwide expressed serious concerns that Microsoft was not going to use the same formats as other browsers (a consistency issue) and furthermore use formats that had significant issues. Neither h.264 nor mp3 are completely free or open.

We built the Web on a foundation that it would be "accessible by Anyone, Anywhere, on Any OS, on Any Device". HTML worked great for this, we agreed on a standard, browsers implemented it, all was good (I'm intentionally ignoring quirks mode and IE's lack of standards support).

CSS came along… same deal… free, open, perfect

ECMAScript/JavaScript came along… free, open, perfect

SVG came along… free, open, perfect

Canvas came along… free, open, perfect

and best of all IE9 came along and Microsoft said "yes, we support standards and using the same markup everywhere" etc.

However HTML5 came along… and Microsoft said we too will implement these HTML5 Video and HTML5 Audio tags that are crucial to the big picture in HTML5… we're going to add hardware acceleration to ensure peak performance… and were going to @$%*! you over by *NOT* natively using a free open format for either audio or video.

We're very happy that Microsoft/IE is finally adopting standards and open web technologies but it __DELETED__ us off to no end when you fall massively short on your first implementation. You had the time, the money, and the resources to do this properly but instead you re-created the Microsoft Silo [TM] that no one wants to play in.

Not at all happy with Microsoft,

Steve

oh, and by any chance rather than changing the style of the blog – could you fix the comment form so that it actually works?! – kthxbye

Why is it such a big deal if Microsoft's format choices aren't completely free and open? Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with h.264 and MP3. Besides, look at what other companies are doing. Google likes to add features to its products that only work in Chrome, and Apple has "HTML5 demos" on its site that only work in Safari because of a browser protection routine. There's nothing wrong with requiring the use of common formats that just happen to not be completely free and open.

@WindowsVista567 – the reason why it is a big deal is that HTML5 Audio and Video *should* enable us to use audio and video in our HTML5 websites and applications and it will work everywhere!

Unfortunately because Microsoft is not using appropriate formats for the open web… we can't. HTML5 Audio and Video is currently a failure because Microsoft will not play fair and support an open format that is supported across all browsers.

On one hand they say use the same markup everywhere – on the other hand they don't support the same markup, on purpose no less. So yeah we're ticked that Microsoft claims they support web standards when in fact they clearly have shown otherwise.

@WindowsVista567 – actually you said it best. "There's nothing wrong with requiring the use of common formats" exactly! all other browsers support a common format… IE was the last browser to the table with support for Audio and Video and they specifically chose to use a **DIFFERENT** format than what all other browsers supported – that's the flipping issue.

@Vic: "IE was the last browser to the table with support for Audio and Video and they specifically chose to use a **DIFFERENT** format than what all other browsers supported – that's the flipping issue."

Actually, Google Chrome and Safari both supported H.264 at the time, did they not? Only Firefox and Opera supported Ogg Theora.

Developers need a single format that is royalty free on all platforms. PERIOD.

Currently there is no such format.

Therefore until the vendors get together and agree on a single royalty free format for audio, and a single royalty free format for video – HTML5 Audio and HTML5 Video will both continue to be a complete failure.

@msfanboys – We can argue till we're blue in the face about what Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, & Opera are doing… but so far they are the only vendors willing to step up to the table to discuss the issue. Microsoft is the only one unwilling to even discuss the problem they are perpetuating.

I didn't really intend for my file format comment to turn into this. I was really getting tired of seeing complaints about h.264 and MP3 in the posts I looked at, and I disagreed with the overall opinion that I was seeing.

Does pretty well in my Chrome dev build w/integrated laptop graphics — stays above 24FPS (film) up to 1000, and 18-20FPS and 4K flakes. On some loads I get a DOM INVALID_STATE_ERR and no snowflakes fall.

@Anon: Okay, now I can tell. It's that you don't understand the issues. There's not much I can do here to help you. I encourage you to research the licensing for H.264 and MP3 to come to your own understanding of the problems with these formats as they relate to the Web.

You say I am wrong, yet you do not correct me. Can it be the case then that there is nothing to correct?

Is it not the case that h264 is royalty free? Is it not the case that h264 is de-facto in compression to quality ratio? Is it not the case that Microsoft and Apple supply h264 support? You cannot disprove factual information – h264 is royalty free, h264 is the best media format available, h264 will be provided by Microsoft and Apple. All you have to do is prove the above wrong.

On the other hand, I do not care about MP3 as FLAC is superior. It is due to its populairty, MP3 support is a must for any multimedia device.

Default settings in browsers = different performance values. Well why then Chrome does not have enabled GPU Accelerated Canvas, when it can improve the performance? I made some tests on my machines and the results are really amazing and interesting.

So @microsoft – since your "Let it Snow" faster demo game page has likely been accessed and had the audio mp3 downloaded over 5,000 time have you paid your $2,500 to mp3licensing yet?

Sucks using a media format that is license encumbered doesn't it?! If you had built this to support ogg vorbis from day one you wouldn't have to pay anyone a dime, because it would be be free just like the open web.

I think I can safely say that this is one of the best demos you have ever put on the site. It fits in perfectly with the Christmas season and is much better than Google's version. I'm beginning to wish there were more songs on the page. My only real complaint is that it seems odd to "brush" the snow away with a mouse – it's another case of designing something for touch and converting it to work with mice. Sadly, I can't test this demo with a touch screen.

I am very unhappy with IE9's performance (I'm afraid the problem could continue into IE10 as well) in my system. I use Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit with all updates applied regularly.

# I always use the Microsoft's homepage (the one with the animation) as a rough benchmark for graphics performance everytime I update IE9. Chrome and Firefox beat IE9 every single time. The animation gets so stuck, the transition is done in 3 stuttering steps rather than a smooth slide. In Firefox it is reasonably smooth and in Chrome it is super-fluid animation.

# When I am watching videos in YouTube, within a matter of minutes I open a large number of tabs. By the time I cross 5 or 6 tabs with YouTube on them, they become non-responsive when switching tabs. When I click on an inactive tab, only the shade of the tab head changes, but the page doesn't change. It takes close to half a minute for the correct "page" to get displayed.

# In web pages having large amount of text, images and embedded flash objects (eg: YouTube pages) scrolling lags behind by almost half a second to a whole 1 second in IE9, whereas in Chrome and Firefox it is a lot more responsive (although not instantaneous).

# The overall experience in IE is bad – stuttering, freezing, jerky – for common actions like scrolling, opening, closing and switching tabs.

# The only areas where IE9 out-performs Firefox and Chrome in my machine are – most of the demos in IE blog (!) and a handful of javascript-intensive websites. Oh yes, and, startup is very quick.

I bought my current hardware more than 6 years ago. Even at the time I bought it, the components had been in the market for almost 2 years. So, my system is considerably outdated.

Although one can very easily blame my outdated hardware for the problems, it must be noted that in the very same machine, Chrome and Firefox are performing well. Are IE9 and later versions totally dependent on latest hardware? Aren't they designed to perform reasonably well on old machines? I want to switch to IE permanently but these performance issues are stopping me 🙁

@IE Team : Please do something about this. I really get irritated when I'm in a hurry but the damn browser goes nuts.

1) You mean this one http://www.microsoft.com/…/default.aspx ? What is your HW? (There might be problem with CPU/GPU/drivers as my notebook has no problem with that page – Elitebook 8540p Core i5 with nVidia GPU or Asus 1000H with Atom N270)

2)Problem with ActiveX plugin from Adobe – There is nothing short of reimplementing Flash Microsoft can do.

3)Seen that, but it requires very complex layout. Room for improvement definitely.

4)Sounds more like problem with your HW/drivers/other programms. First I'd check GPU drivers, then other drivers and then rest of programms as they might cause excessive CPU/disk usage – be it AV or something else.

5) Six years old HW should be fine – Core2 + IGP is sufficent for majority of pages, for example.

Also check whether or not IE uses HW acceleration or not (if yes, try to turn it off – some versions of drivers/GPUs are broken or insufficent and not yet on blacklist)

I installed latest driver for my GPU and made sure nothing is left out by Windows Update too. I tried disabling HW acceleration but still no improvement.

Also, with regard to other programs, I don't have even a single piece of unnecessary crap software/service running in background. In terms of junk software using up system resources, you could say my system is as close you'll get to a fresh clean install of Windows. There is basically nothing except Windows and MS Office. Just to make sure, I checked task manager and resource monitor. Zip! Nothing else except the browser.

Why browser can not use the codecs installed on my system. When my media player can use that format there is no reason why browser which is sitting on the top of the underlying system can not use that. It is just an bad add on in browser. Also, there should not be any comprimise in terms of qualtity in the name of Open Web for the sake of end user.

Not good. I think I see the problem. Pentium D is successor of Pentium 4 (Netburst architecture) , which requires special optimisation because it's quite anomalous CPU family. Trouble is that optimisation for P4(D) won't properly work on any other processor no matter what it is. AFAIK generally current software is more or less optimised for Core2 and newer / AMD Phenoms or for old procesors like Pentium III Apparently somebody did separate optimisation for P4 on some others browsers. (question is whether it is worth it as they are special case and quite old by now and needed quite high frequencies to have proper performance)

Because I doubt IE team will create separate optimisation for P4, the only "fix" would be buying newer supported CPU (Core2) , which I would recommend anyway due to much higher performance and lower power consumption. Quick look at ebay shows number of them available for reasonable price (at least I think it's reasonable unless one wants to fully upgrade PC to new platform anyway…)

Hmmm.. now that I've come to know that my processor is the problem, I can actually calm down 😀 Upgrading is not a problem, I'm going to do it anyway in the near future. It's funny how some processors before it and all processors after it are supported and I bought just that one in the middle!

Browsers can indeed use the existing codecs on your system. The Firefox code repository for instance even has code added to it years ago to use existing h.264 Windows codecs for HTML5 video support but that code was never added to the browser because of political reasons/choices. So Firefox could easily use the existing h.264 codec that are present on almost every system already but Moxilla blatantly refuses to do so.

But I guess that is why Mozilla is getting the 300 million dollars a year from Google who is the propriatary owner of the VP8 codec in WebM.

Did Rob Mauceri confirm that they paid the $2,500 licensing fee per mp3 title used in the HTML5 demos? I'm thinking that maybe Microsoft would be willing to pay the licensing fee for all of our HTML5 apps and games to use the mp3 format for audio since they refuse to support OGG formats natively?

There's also no update from Microsoft on natively supporting a free and open video format in IE. We need support for this in order for IE to be able to support HTML5. Currently Microsoft is the only vendor with a browser that doesn't fully support HTML5, which is pretty sad considering. IE10 is really close now that it properly supports innerHTML, now it only needs to support free and open Audio/Video formats to make IE HTML5 capable.

Keeping fingers crossed that the next IE10 beta will be HTML5 ready! 😀

Does the Windows Phone and IE10 support rounded corners and gradients? or is it just the sucky metro UI that hasn't discovered that single colored squares makes everything look like a "HelloWorld" app built by VB Developers?

I'm all for minimalistic design but the Metro UI just looks like no one cared.

Since I may be forced to develop apps for Windows 8 that use this [sarcasm]UI design[/sarcasm] are there API options to override this and make a decent looking UI for my apps?!

@A_Zune I don't think anyone is suggesting MPEG1. We are suggesting using a format that is appropriate for the web – which means a format that is free and open, and yes ideally with decent compression etc. The only thing that has been determined so far in the past 2 years regarding HTML5 Video is that there is 1 format that absolutely can not be used… and that is h.264. However Microsoft has gone ahead and made this their default which means IE is the only browser that doesn't properly support HTML5 Video at the moment. We're hoping that the people at Microsoft are finally getting this and working on supporting a free and open format so that HTML5 can be a success. We've already encountered financial drawbacks to using mp3s for audio as even the Let it Snow demo has/had to pay $2,500+ in licensing fees for using a non-free, non-open format.

Rumor has it that Microsoft has already learned this lesson and that internal releases of IE10 do support OGG audio natively but my sources have been very tight lipped about this as once again, Microsoft hates to admit that they were wrong about anything. like say… *cough* *cough* the Zune.

@Anon – how can a format with a patent pool to collect royalties on a propriatary format ever be considered either free or open?!

Stop drinking the MSFT koolaid and read up on licensing and open formats.

We've been complaining about this on every forum on the Internet for several years trying to find a usable solution and you somehow think that the one format already ruled out can somehow fill the gap!?!? Yikes dude you're about 3 months behind in your research reading on the matter.

We missing one point here as every movie/songs site today plays so called h264 formats and millions and millions of songs/movies are in h264 format with a very good hardware support for them and none in ogg format. therefore, even if browsers support ogg format. I do not see this as a viable option to convert them all in different format. But going forward, working on do not repeat policy in development. Browsers should not take this responsibility of supporting or non-supporting a codec as this is already baked in underlying system. They can read from system. If , I my site support some format, I can distribute the codec for that. Once that is installed on that system. the Video/audio shoud work fine in all browsers.This will also be useful in implementing DRM in HTML5 with properitory codecs.

No one cares. No one. Not a single end user. Nill. Nada. None. All that matters is that h264 is free for end users. That is all that matters. h264 is royalty free and will be provided and supported by Apple and Microsoft.

I could not care less about MSFT. Look I compared XVID, h264, and WebM. h264 is the clear winner in hardware suppot, quality, performance, compression, 3D, etc. This is the reson why I defend it.

Web is not detached from the rest of the world, so to promote a "Free and Open" codec, you need to get people in real world use it first. When almost every video capture/recording device including camcorders, cellphones, portable media players, etc. etc. produces H.264 encoded video and MP3 encoded audio. Even Android based phones like Samsung Galaxy S2 produces mp4 video files instead of webm. So for the common people it's simply much easier to share mp4 video and mp3 audio instead of transcoding into webm and ogg vorbis. I think you people should first try convince all those hardware manufacturers to adopt your "Free and Open" codec instead of trying to force web browsers to do so.

The Web is a part of the real world, it won't work without being easily interoperable with the rest of the world. The Web serves the World, the World doesn't serve the Web.

Please… The next IE without compatibility for Windows Vista SP2?… are you want to kill IE? Chrome and Firefox give support to Windows XP!!! And Internet Explorer 10 won´t have support for Windows Vista? Escuse me… but are you crazy??? So IETeam… I hope that you consider this situation… Thanks

You guys are all missing the point. As a developer I plan to pay *Abso-!@#$ing-lutely nothing* to distribute my media (audio/video) as part of my apps/games on the web/mobile/tablets.

Thus for me (as a developer) as well as hmm, every developer I know… we have no interest in formats that will cost us just for the pleasure of using the format.

Sure, over 1/2 of my music collection at home is in mp3 format, because it cost me (personally) zero dollars to convert my CD collection into a format I could use on the devices I need it for. However when I make my web app/games I ensure my audio is in OGG format, and I make an AAC format for the browsers that don't support OGG (e.g. IE). Over time I'm going to push IE users of the site to upgrade their browser – once the IE traffic counts for less than 20%, I'll drop IE support completely.

I'm planning to make a site for audio and video… and I'm now at the point where I have to decide what format(s) I need to support. Hosting my video in 2 or more formats will cost me time and hassle that I don't want. Since the future of h.264 is highly unknown and it certainly doesn't fit my needs for a free and open format there's no way in H____ that I am going to use it. Any users visiting my site will either hopefully already have the WebM support, or they will need to download it. It sucks for usability that many IE users won't have the correct format installed by default, but hopefully if the pressure that comes from end users complaining to Microsoft that the free web format isn't supported by IE will get them to move their product to support it by default out of the box.

Developers make a stand! Tell Microsoft you want free and open formats for HTML5 in Internet Explorer Now! Don't let Microsoft ruin HTML5 Video and HTML5 Audio like IE6 ruined the Web!

MPEG-4 AAC support doesn't need to be dropped. If hardware decoders work well with it, great. We'd just like free formats available in addition to the patented ones, so everyone can use whichever is best for their job.

Ditching users will work fine. I already ignore sites that refuse to provide me with h.264 video.

Sites delivering ineffienct video are clearly environmentally unfriendly and should be avoided by everybody.

Video makes up more than half the internet traffic. Using even a slightly less efficient codec would in the long run cost hunderds of millions or even billions in bandwith investment. Also it would cost more running costs and use a lot more energy in transport network and computer clients. Using a codec that is not widely hardware supported by GPU's will cost even more energy.

If for instance Youtube would serve all video's in VP8 (where h.264 can deliver the same quality using 20% less data) than it might mean an estimated 1 Wh extra traffic cost and 1Wh extra cost to play the non hardware accellerated video for every hour of video. With Youtube serving 10 billion minutes of video a day or 160 million hours that would mean 320 MWh of extra energy wasted every day for using an inferior video solution for just Youtube alone. Bad for the environment and bad for overall costs as well.

Using Youtube on HTML5 with a WebM capable browser will actually costing users money and make them contribute to global warming.

@A_Zune I think we can all agree that high compression and thus reduced bandwidth is a serious concern but its also something that can be fine tuned over time making the format better and better.

However the problem doesn't lie in the compression ratio but rather the fundamentals behind who owns the format and if/when/where/why there are charges for using the format.

If I host a site, that delivers free video content… but you need to sign up to see that content… do I need to pay royalties? with h.264 it isn't quite clear about that, and what worries developers is that because the format isn't 100% free and more specifically NOT open, there's nothing stopping the owners changing their minds and saying… you know what?… this situation isn't making us enough money we're changing the licensing fee structure to increase all fees by 15%. ****THIS IS THE ISSUE!!!!!!!*****

This is scary for anyone hosting video because maybe today, my site is 100% free for all users… but down the road I discover that I just can't make ends meet with ad placements so I change my site model from a freemium service to a freemium/subscription model… now my dedicated users are paying to access the site… I've now crossed that line from serving free content… to technically serving up paid content… do I now have to pay up for h.264 license fees?!?!?!

This is why the Web needs a free and open video format. Compression should be a big concern, but BIGGER than that is the issue that the format ABSOLUTELY MUST BE OPEN in order to ensure that developers are safe from unknown 3rd party licensing changes that they have no control over.

The PNG image format is a **CLASSIC** example of exactly why this is needed. The owners of the GIF compression format did a number on the entire Internet community when they pushed for increased licensing fees. The MP3 format also has issues, and h.264 certainly does…

we don't care which format is actually used in the long run for Audio and Video…

So you want your customers to pay you bucks while you don't want to pay anything to someone else? Excuse me but that sounds quite a moronic way of thinking.

@Vic,

Then I think you should try push those Android phone makers to make their phones produce webm videos instead of mp4 videos before trying to tell IE to support webm. When even phones based on Google's own mobile OS produces mp4 videos, you don't have much of a case for pushing others for webm support.

Like I said before, the Web serves the World, the World doesn't serve the Web. If you want videos in non-mp4 format on the Web, you first should push those video-producing device makers to produce videos in non-mp4 format. Especially those Google Android-based phones. If those Android devices produce webm videos by default, then there may be some incentive for Microsoft to support webm natively in IE.

Actually the royalty situation fo h.264 is pretty clear in that the royalties in the patentpool can only be increased by a maximum of 10% every 5 years (last 5 year extension was without any increase) and that royalties end in about ten years (except on some newer feature additions like multiview which other codecs mostly do not even have).

Royalties could actually get lower easily because less patents will apply in future years. To abide by the FRAND promise individual patent holders cannot increase their patent royalties so when more and more patents disappear from the pool the royalties need to get lower.

@A_Zune – please provide a direct link to the URL that explains that publishing h.264 format video on a website, webapp, or mobile/tablet app is 100% free for the developer creating the app and can never be charged in the future even if the developer changes their business model. (e.g. free to paid service)

If you can't provide a link to such info, then you've just discovered the issue. Thus we need to find another format that IS FREE and IS OPEN because that is what matters most on the open Web.

Since the open Web needs to serve the World, and the World does not serve the open Web, so the first priority for the requirement of a format for the Web is not whether it is open, but that it works for the World. What matters most is if its works best for the real World, not some "Free and Open" ideals. If those ideals really matter most, why Google doesn't push webm for all android devices?

@Sunil @Thomas – Sunil you didn't read your own link… the article clearly states what we've been stating all along:

"while H.264 was currently royalty-free (and would remain so until 2015), there was no guarantee that MPEG LA wouldn't start charging licensing fees later on" ——— THIS IS THE ISSUE!!!!!! THIS IS WHY YOU CAN'T USE ***NON-OPEN*** FORMATS on the Mother Trucking OPEN WEB!!!!! how many Mother Trucking times must we state this!!!!!

HTML5 Video **MUST** use a FREE and OPEN Video format!… any browser that doesn't implement their HTML5 Video with native support for a video format that isn't open and free… has FAILED to implement HTML5 Video!

Internet Explorer has NOT implemented HTML5 Video properly… thus IE does not yet fully support HTML5!!!

Yes I know that further in the article it talks about the free-forever announcement… but that is only when the video content for the end user is free.

If your site or app is a paid site/app… and it just happens to include some video content (regardless how much)… YOU HAVE TO PAY LICENSING FEEs for something that you should not have to.

WEB = Free

HTML = Free

CSS = Free

PNG = Free

JavaScript = Free

Canvas = Free

SVG = Free

HTML5 Audio = Free (Except In IE you must use AAC format to qualify)

HTML5 Video = Free (Except in IE)

Internet Explorer is once again! the browser holding back the Web… its like the IE6 disaster all over again!… I'm not looking forward to 2015 and having to deal with old versions of IE that don't support open formats!

"This means that if you use H.264 solely for free web video, you will never have to pay a fee to the MPEG-LA. It does not rule out the possibility, however, that some other patent holder outside the MPEG-LA will come calling."

I think you did not read my comments properly, what I am saying why we need to have a codec in a browser why cam't browser read it from onderlying OS. Then , as a Web Developer I will not have to worry about different browsers.if you want to support a particular codec you can distribut te codec and It will run fine across all browsers after first install. over 95% of the devices can read and produce H264 codec, hence It would very easy for end users and easier for developers if browsers use the codec to the underlying system.

@sunil – as soon as MPEG-LA and all other patent holders on the h.264 agree to sign a "free forever", "will never start charging", & a "can be used freely to serve up 'free' content on a 'paid' app/site/game" the h.264 will be the way to go!

The patentholders in the patetnpool have promised to use fair licensing. That means that cannot change terms for their licensing in any drastic way. They would not be able to enforce such changes because it would be abuse of a patent promise.

Also because of the large marketshare of h.264 the patent holders effectvly fall under anti-trust laws meaning that any action that is ment stifle competition is actually illegal and could mean billion dollar fines.

So h.264 is actually very usefull for video as everybody can easily use it (proven already) and it does not pose a big patent risk for the future. Several other format do pose a lot of patent risks. VP8 poses so much patent risk that Google does not even want to provide other parties indemenity for using the codec thay provide.

Microsoft provides Windows users with protection from patent claims. Why can't Google not even do that for their own V8 codec software ?

@Rob Mauceri, @Microsoft, @A_Zune – so I've made a webapp / mobile app that serves up video as part of its content (say 5-15%)… users need to pay to access the site, but once a member (e.g. once they are in)… do I as a developer have to pay MPEG-LA royalties if the format used is h.264?

If the answer is yes, or maybe… then I want no part of this video format and I'll stick to WebM and Ogg (which I currently use). If however the answer is no (and it is 100% free for me to publish the video content in h.264 now, and forever) then I'll consider switching for bandwidth/compatibility reasons.

If the answer is foggy/unknown… you can see why web developers are reluctant to embrace h.264 in any way.

huh, so Web is Free and you still want to charge people for accessing your website? What hypocrisy is that? In one sentence you say Web is Free, in another sentence you say you want to charge people for accessing your website, then in yet another sentence you say you don't want to pay others for what you use on the web to gain money.

If you think WEB = Free, then you should not charge people for accessing your website. If you charge people for your website, then you are making the Web non-Free yourself.